Epstein was accused in 2006 of sexually abusing children under 14 years of age.
Photo: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
A report by the United States Department of Justice revealed on Tuesday that a series of “negligence” within the federal prison system allowed mogul Jeffrey Epstein to commit suicide in his cell in August 2019 while waiting to be tried for sex trafficking.
According to the report, there were several factors that facilitated suicide such as glitches in surveillance cameras and the failure of the Federal Bureau of Prisons to assign Epstein a cellmate after he attempted suicide a month before his death.
The prison’s psychological unit concluded that he needed to be housed with an appropriate cellmate, and an email was sent to 70 prison staff informing them of this requirement, the report says.
Besides, the tycoon had an “excessive amount” of sheets at his disposal, which he ended up using to hang himselfaccording to the report.
Two prison staff members assigned to his unit then failed to search Epstein’s cell or check on him every 30 minutes, then lied about it., according to the report. As a result, Epstein was not observed for four hours before his death.
The 120-page report, released Tuesday, found some level of misconduct by 13 Bureau of Prisons employeesincluding two who were criminally charged and four others whose criminal references were rejected by federal prosecutors.
The document has been prepared by the inspector general of the Department of Justice, Michael Horowitz, who is in charge of independently supervising cases related to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
“The combination of negligence, misconduct and outright job performance failures documented in today’s report contributed to an environment in which arguably one of the most notorious inmates in BOP custody was left unsupervised and alone in his cell with a excess prison sheets, thus giving him the opportunity to take his own life,” Horowitz said in a statement.
Epstein was charged in 2006 with sexually abusing children under the age of 14 and pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution.
He spent time in a Florida jail and registered as a sex offender.
After the Miami Herald reported that there were many more minors and women who had been abused by Epstein, he was arrested in July 2019 on various federal sex trafficking charges.
One month after his arrest, in August 2019, Epstein committed suicide in a New York jail.
With information from EFE
Keep reading:
• Rihanna, Joe Biden and Ben Affleck are on the list of celebrities who went to Epstein’s “Pedophile Island”
• The first statements of Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice from jail: “I wish I had never met him”
• Ghislaine Maxwell: the compelling testimony that led to her conviction for sex trafficking
